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Bomb Rating:

Suburbia is a really screwed-up place, and I'm glad I don't live there.

SPOILERS: Even though it's a video, you might not want to read this review if you plan to see the film.

Suburbia is a really screwed-up place, and I'm glad I don't live there, but I just can't figure out how these screwed-up people got that way and why in hell they think the rest of us want to know about it.

I'm all for honest assessments of life, but I couldn't figure out what director Karen Moncrieff was trying to do here. Ostensibly, this film is about Meg (Agnes Bruckner) and a few screwed up months in her life. She lives in a single parent home with her mother (Margaret Colin) and freaky, mentally unstable younger sister. She takes some refuge in her English class at school where she's singled out as an outstanding poet by her teacher, Mr. Auster (David Strathairn).

As Mr. Auster and Meg begin to grow abnormally close, I just sat there and blocked out the potential for this relationship to go in direction I really didn't want it to. Unfortunately, it did, and much to both my and Meg's chagrin.

The amazing thing about this little sexual turn is that I couldn't detect any note from Auster that he thought this was wrong. Worse, Moncrieff tries to paint a sympathetic portrait of the guy by explaining that he lost a child and as a result, his wife (Frances Fisher), isn't quite all there anymore. Okay, so what? So now the guy is looking for students to bang? I don't buy it. I don't buy it at all: Personally, I was looking for the tender, touching, reflective scene at the end of this movie, where enraged parents feed Mr. Auster his own nuts.